Under Pressure
by I'm the Cat's Meow
Summary: Shiro is gone and Keith struggles to cope with leading Voltron against the Galra and his inner turmoil as well. The dose of quintessence awoke something inside of him, or perhaps it just made Keith aware of it's presence, regardless, Keith was going to find out what it was, or drop dead from lack of sleep. Whichever comes first. Eventual Klance (VERY eventual sloooooow burn)
1. Chapter 1

" _If you can keep your head when all about you_

 _Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,_

 _If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,_

 _But make allowance for their doubting too;_

 _If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew_

 _To serve your turn long after they are gone,_

 _And so hold on when there is nothing in you_

 _Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'_

 _If you can fill the unforgiving minute_

 _With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,_

 _Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,_

 _And—which is more—you'll be a Man, my son!"_

Excerpts from Kipling's "If"

Chapter 1

Great Expectations

How long had it been tingling at the edge of his grasp. There, so close but never close enough. He'd felt it after Shiro, after he, after he was lost. But he'd felt it before then as well. He'd felt it while undergoing the trials of Marmora. Earlier even than Marmora he felt it when he was doused in Quintessence while fighting the druid. He'd learned to accept this tingling, the itching sensation in the back of his mind that had been growing more pronounced as of late, but never enough to fully grasp.

He'd stayed up too late last night. He knew he shouldn't have. The leader of Voltron had to be alert and on guard at all times, but right now he just wanted to curl back into the warmth of his covers.

'Patience yields focus' Shiro's words echo in his head every night as he sat on his bed, eyes closed senses drawn inward towards the nagging itch. He could find it, the place in his mind that was poking and scratching at his psyche, but he could never explore it, he couldn't even approach it really. A wall of thick mental static separated him from this particular part of his mindscape.

He'd stayed up much too late attempting to grind his way through the static. Every night the same thing. Every night too little sleep. Every night a little closer, but still not close enough. It was driving him insane. He might already be insane now that he thought about it. How many other people have thick static walls blocking parts of their mind? Well if other people did they certainly weren't talking about it.

Glancing at his clock with a quiet sigh he heaved himself from the bed, with surprising fluidity for how dead tired he felt. He stumbled into his bathroom and splashed some water onto his face. The bags under his eyes had grown again. He really wasn't getting enough sleep, but he had so much to do, he had to be strong. Shiro was strong, and he believed in him, so he would be strong too.

With another drawn out sigh he reached into his drawer and pulled out a little makeup kit. Lancc had confronted him about it, actually he'd confronted everyone, practically hissing with a towel wrapped around his head and a facemask of some sort. He thought Pidge had taken it, but she adamantly denied having anything to do with its disappearance.

Eventually Lance gave up the search and instead demanded the castle be taken to the nearest beauty salon. Sick and tired of his constant moaning the team agreed as long as Lance promised to never EVER be that annoying ever again. So far he'd kept his end of the bargain, if only barely.

He finished adding the makeup under his eyes. He couldn't use too much. He'd long past the point of being able to hide the tiredness in his eyes, but this helped him look a little less like one of the walking dead, so he decided it was worth it. Satisfied with how the lines and bags in his face had receded, he threw on his jacket and walked out the door. The team was meeting in the training room in a few minutes. Why he decided an early morning training session was a good idea was beyond him, but as he was the one who ordered everyone to be there, he could hardly sleep in and miss it.

Approaching the door to the castles training room, he drew himself up and squared his shoulders. He had to be strong for his team, hell, for the universe! He had to be strong for Shiro. Shiro said he could do it, could be a leader, and no matter how much he disagreed he couldn't let Shiro down. He wouldn't let Shiro down.

Throwing his head high with confidence he didn't feel, he paced into the room to find the rest of his fellow Paladins had already arrived. Seeing no need for pleasantries, he was too tired for them anyway, he jumped right into begin the training.

"Alright guys we'll just warm up a bit this first round, level fifteen to start and then we'll increase the levels as we go."

Silence for a while as looks of confusion can be seen on the still yawning Paladins, until Pidge, always there with an answer speaks up.

"Level fifteen as a warmup? Keith we've never made it past level ten in any of our group training sessions. Remember last time? We had to stop and take Hunk to the infirmary after the bot made him lose his lunch with a jab to the gut?"

Thinking back that did happen. But had they really only made it to level ten? He could have sworn he left that day having at least made it into the high twenties? Tired brain grasping for an answer before it hit him. He'd stayed alone that day. While the others decided to wander off or help Hunk he had stayed. It was a team exercise and the team was down, so he had no problem with them leaving. They could train on there own time individually if they wanted.

But, perhaps he had trained a bit more than he'd meant to that day. He didn't remember much of it really, just the endless bots he kept calling in, and striking down one after the other. Lost in a battle trance he swept them all aside until he had collapsed from exhaustion. When he finally recovered he dragged himself into bed. It was one of the only nights in recent memory where he hadn't entered his mindscape in search of answers.

"I, ya, sure level ten, we'll start there."

"Uhh I don't know about that" Hunk had hunched over, rubbing at his stomach in memory of his lost meal. "I mean, last time we ended with ten, and we didn't even finish it, well at least I didn't finish it because I was throwing up but maybe you all finished it and I just don't remember but I'm pretty sure I remember we didn't finish it and even if we did, well that was the last and hardest level we did so it can hardly be called a warm up to start with it today, in fact, I think it'd be best to start with something a little lower, say like, level five or maybe even level one? Ya level one sounds really good right now, and we can work our way up to level ten after we warm up?"

It seemed everyone was waiting for Keith to cut him off and deal with Hunks ramblings. He had trouble remembering sometimes that they looked to him for this kind of stuff now. But Hunk had finally fallen silent and was awaiting Keith's decision. He knew his Paladins could take level ten. He'd taken at least level twentyfive by himself before exhaustion took him. Mind made up, he stifled a yawn and addressed his team.

"We'll start with level ten. Our teamwork should be better than last time so this shouldn't be nearly as difficult."

He was right about one thing. It was easier, which is odd because he was feeling like he could drop dead from exhaustion at any moment. But he found everything seemed to move a little slower than they should be. The robots were pitifully weak, there's no way the team struggled with this the other day. He darted in and out of the training bots, sword flashing out in precise strikes to critical points. Gliding in and out of his teammates to slice bot after bot until the only sound Keith could hear was the roar of adrenaline as blood pumped through his ears.

He turned to look at his fellow paladins, who were all gasping for breath, gulping in oxygen like the castle would run out in any minute.

"Um, good job" there, some encouragement. Shiro was always encouraging so he might as well try to be a little as well.

He'd obviously not done a very good job of being encouraging because Lance met him with a glare.

"Good job! Good Job!? That was hell! That was exhausting there were so many! And all you can say is good job!? I can barely move after that!"

The others nodded in agreement as much as they could. Trying to conserve their strength, they didn't have the energy to speak, which spoke a great deal about Lance's strength that he was able to not only speak, but flat out yell at him.

He didn't really know what to say to the outburst, and it seemed Lance was too tired to continue anyway.

"Oh. Sorry, um… take a break and we'll start up again in a little while alright?"

With a unanimous groan bodies flopped onto the cold ground relishing in the cool metal against their overheated bodies.

Keith slid onto the ground and crossed his legs beside them. Closing his eyes he focused his thoughts inward, towards static. 'Patience yields focus' He would be patient, and he'd find his way through the static eventually.


	2. Chapter 2

Hey all, it's been a while. I'm horrible at posting these but I do get around to it every once in a while. Thank's a bunch to those who reviewed, I enjoyed the comments.

Also, while I'm fairly decent at coming up with cool ideas (I think) I tend to struggle with the whole writing them down thing. I can map out a really cool scene or story plot in my head, but then when it comes time to type I just stare at my computer and think about how much work that would require. Anyway, if your a fan of my work or writing style or something and are interested, I wouldn't mind collaborating on a project, maybe the expectations of ruining it for someone else by losing focus will inspire me to actually write...

Welp, here's chapter two, (BTW I don't own Voltron yadayada) hope you enjoy!

" _I do not believe that_

 _from the inside_

 _my mind is being eaten_

 _alive_

 _by the deadgod repellent_

 _Of my own every thought._

 _I do not believe that."_

Alessandrelli

Chapter 2 Quintessence

High above a lush green planet hovered the main Galra fleet, and with it, Zarkon's ship. He was still recovering from his battle with Voltron, but the empire was still operating as normal. This particular planet had no resources of any particular use to the empire, and had been deemed unimportant with little if any strategic value. However it did possess one asset Haggar in particular was keen to get her hands on: life. The planet teamed with dense vegetation and many different creatures of all shapes and sizes. It was overflowing with life, with quintessence, and soon, it would be nothing but an empty husk.

The Druids gathered with Haggar around the Komar. Steadying themselves they began the ritual that would extract the planet's very soul and essence. The ritual itself wasn't all that labor intensive, at least when compared to the energy gained by leaching the soul from a planet. It worked similarly to how osmosis would with water. Planets like to be in equilibrium, and their quintessence flows evenly throughout it to ensure this balance. Using the Komar experiment the Druids are able to successfully disrupt this careful equilibrium and trick the planet into being much larger than it was, stretching its energy, its quintessence to encompass empty space, which is then absorbed by the Druids with the Komar.

What's left is an empty husk of a planet, devoid of life and drained of its essence, along with pure, unfiltered quintessence. In order to be useful to the Galra, quintessence has to be further refined and rid of the remaining imprint left on it by the planet it was taken from.

There really is no such thing as pure or untainted quintessence, it could be refined as much as scientifically and magically possible until only trace elements of emotion were left within the golden energy. This trace emotion is no problem when the quintessence is used as fuel for the Galran empire's massive starfleet, but for the Druids there were some risks involved with constantly absorbing foreign emotions. Theapparant randomness of it all was the real problem; even after all these thousands of years Haggar and her Druids were still unable to know with even a decent amount of accuracy what the emotional 'flavor' of a planet's life energy would be after it got sucked out. They could run test after test on the energy before they finally drain the planet dry, but the emotions had a tendency to change in the last moments of a planet's life.

The worst was despair. A Druid who called on despair filled quintessence would slowly lose themselves to the overwhelming hopelessness bound within. Unfortunately it was an all too common emotion tainting vast quantities of quintessence. They tended to be the ones fueling the ships. Other emotions such as rage or resignation were much more prefered. There were no happy emotions in the quintessence of a dead planet, but some feelings allowed for a better sense of direction and purpose.

Haggar reached out to sample the now refined energy. Anger, and it was a strong batch too. The beings on this planet were raging against the inevitable dying of the light. Anger wasn't Haggar's preferred emotion, she was too old, her plans too meticulous to accidentally ruin in a bout of rage. One of her younger druids might like the heightened awareness and rush of adrenaline the angry energy would fill them with, but not her.

Currently alone she felt comfortable sagging into a chair and sighing, flipping the glass tube of energy in one hand with the ease of someone who'd done it tens of thousands of times before while drinking a blend of tea she found particularly tasty. It really was a shame there's only a bit more of the blend left, but the world the leaves were native to was destroyed long ago, courtesy of Haggar herself. Haggar didn't regret many things, but good tea is hard to come by.

Lost in thought for several minutes she sips her tea and flips the tube until only the dregs remain. Standing abruptly she makes her way down to her laboratory. No, she wouldn't be giving this quintessence to some young foolhardy druid. She had a pet to fill with rage and a Castle of Lions to send it to.

Keith had always been well above averagely athletic but the superhuman levels of grace and strength were starting to become noticeable even to his sleep deprived brain. That's another thing, he'd been operating on less than an hour of sleep a night for over a month now and somehow he was not only still standing, but fighting better than he ever had. That isn't to say Keith wasn't constantly dead on his feet, but he was still on his feet.

He was starting to lose it, he'd thought before that he was going insane, well now he knew he was. Lack of sleep didn't really bring out the best in a person's attitude and he'd been getting increasingly sharp with his team. It wasn't intentional, and everyone new he was under a lot of pressure so they didn't say anything and just let him do his thing. Even loud-mouth Lance was being a semi decent and letting him be… but that might have been only after a stern talking to from Pidge about emotional space and giving people time etc. He'd heard that little conversation, he heard lots of things. Maybe he should let everyone know that secret conversations about how they were worried for him should take place a minimum of 4 rooms away or they weren't all that secret.

Staring off into the middle distance Keith continued to run through the things he had to do and the problems he'd yet to solve while chewing on a bite of tasty orange goop. He didn't know what it was but Hunk sure knew how to make a tasty meal. He took another bite, twitching and hissing out a breath of air as he bit through his tongue again. This was the fifth time in as many meals, He couldn't even eat without hurting himself, just one more problem to write onto the ever increasing list.


End file.
